Influx of Russian Gangsters Troubles F.B.I. in Brooklyn

By SELWYN RAAB

Published: August 23, 1994

Correction Appended

As a Brighton Beach subway train thundered overhead, a hit man pumped one fatal bullet into the back of Oleg Korataev's head. It took four rounds in the face and chest to finish off another suspected gangster, Yanik Magasayev. Alexandre Graber died thousands of miles away in a hail of automatic gunfire.

Near the Brighton Beach boardwalk, a gunman ambushed Naum Raichel, severely wounding him with three bullets in his chest and stomach. That same day in Germany, Mr. Raichel's brother, Simeon, was beaten into unconsciousness and suffered a brain concussion.

Although the five murder and assault cases occurred this year in New York, Moscow and Berlin, Federal and New York City law-enforcement officials say the crimes have a common root cause. According to the officials, a new wave of callous Russian organized-crime figures, with ties to Brighton Beach and the former republics of the Soviet Union, is responsible for the outburst of violence.

The Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay sections of Brooklyn have been headquarters for a smattering of emigre Russian crime gangs since the 1970's, when the Soviet Union permitted the first of about 300,000 people to emigrate to the United States. But the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 spawned thousands of powerful crime gangs -- collectively known as the Russian mafia -- and some of these groups, officials warn, are establishing bases among emigre communities in the United States, particularly in South Brooklyn.

"The ones coming in now are more violent and better organized than the old-timers," says Jim E. Moody, chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's organized-crime section. "They are maintaining links to gangs in Moscow and other places in the old Soviet Union with money flowing back and forth."

To combat the latest organized-crime threat, the Justice Department in January elevated the Russian mafia to the highest investigative priority, the same level as the American and Sicilian Mafias, Asian organized-crime groups and Colombian cocaine cartels. Because of the magnitude of the problem in the New York area, the F.B.I. created a Russian squad in its New York office in May, the first F.B.I. unit in the country to deal exclusively with Russian criminals.

"We didn't establish the squad on a whim," said William A. Gavin, the head of the F.B.I. office in New York. "They are dangerous, and our aim is not to allow them to gain a foothold as the Italian-American families did."

A disturbing sign of the Russian mafia's emergence in America, officials acknowledged, is the arrival of Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, whom Russian police identify as a Vor v Zakone -- Russian for a "thief-in-law" -- the top criminal category in the old Soviet Union. Law-enforcement officials said they feared that Mr. Ivankov's mission is to oversee and enlarge operations involving emigre racketeers here and gangsters in Russia. 'The First Team' Extends Its Influence

In the 1970's and early 1980's, a wave of Russian-born criminals arrived in New York and lived mainly in South Brooklyn, where they concentrated largely on white-collar crimes, especially frauds involving gasoline taxes, Medicare payments and counterfeit credit cards. Because of the cold war and travel bans, this group had little contact with criminals in the Soviet Union.

The newcomers who have arrived in America in the last three years are labeled "the first team" by detectives and Federal agents. Investigators say they have not only taken over the white-collar crimes established by their predecessors but have expanded into other rackets, including narcotics trafficking, money laundering, extortion of emigre merchants and prostitution.

And Drug Enforcement Administration agents say they have uncovered concrete evidence showing that a Russian gang from Brooklyn imported heroin and for the first time sold it to mobsters working for traditional American Mafia families. Previously, veteran American mobsters imported drugs through their own networks or bought it from non-Russian suppliers.

While many Federal law-enforcement officials portray the Russian groups as a significant problem, some state prosecutors and investigators are dubious about their overall importance in the underworld.

"We don't see any coordination from Russia or the other republics," said Eric Seidel, the chief of the organized-crime bureau in the Brooklyn District Attorney's office. "There is no evidence of large-scale violence or that the Russians are dominant in any specific racket."

Peter Grinenko, an investigator in the Brooklyn District Attorney's office who speaks Russian and has been working on Russian crime cases in the New York area for 13 years, said the emigre racketeers in America have no defined organizational structures like those of the Mafia.

"As individuals, they are into scams and shakedowns to lay their hands on money any way they can," Mr. Grinenko said. "But as organized crime groups go in America, they are a flea on a horse." Feeling Secure In Brighton Beach

Correction: August 24, 1994, Wednesday A picture caption yesterday with an article about Russian organized-crime activity in Brooklyn described incorrectly the shooting of Naum Raichel, which law-enforcement officials said was linked to organized crime. Mr. Raichel was wounded in the attack; he was not killed.